1966 World Cup
The first World Cup of my memory and World Cup Willie, I can see him now, and some of the team, there was Georgie Best, the Charlton Brothers, Bobby Moore, Geoff Hurst, Nobby Stiles, Peter Bonetti and Martin Peters, these are names I remember, there were more obviously, led by Alf Ramsey.. They were on every cereal box at the breakfast table... yet at the same time as our football heroes were beating out the opposition and achieving the ultimate victory in the beautiful game a darker more ominous challenge was boiling away in Vietnam.
Johnathon Willmore, Nicholas Trelevan, Brian Calvert and others in my Grade Three class at Weeke Primary, Winchester, had new connector pens, ones that had stubby felt tips all joined together in a stack of black, blue, green and red..and in front of them they had paper..all that was needed to, each day, and seemingly all day, drawn their own interpretation of the combat taking place in a country so far away no one even bothered to tell us where it was.
For young English children Vietnam was a macabre wall paper that hung in the living rooms of our lives. No one we knew was there, no one we knew had even been there, it was strange , it was compelling in its omnipresence, its acronyms, its black and white vision and its insidious infiltration of our meal times... Vietnam...or as Johnathon Woolmore would have said "Nam..phlam..phlam..phow..frrrrr.bam..."
Johnathon Willmore, Nicholas Trelevan, Brian Calvert and others in my Grade Three class at Weeke Primary, Winchester, had new connector pens, ones that had stubby felt tips all joined together in a stack of black, blue, green and red..and in front of them they had paper..all that was needed to, each day, and seemingly all day, drawn their own interpretation of the combat taking place in a country so far away no one even bothered to tell us where it was.
For young English children Vietnam was a macabre wall paper that hung in the living rooms of our lives. No one we knew was there, no one we knew had even been there, it was strange , it was compelling in its omnipresence, its acronyms, its black and white vision and its insidious infiltration of our meal times... Vietnam...or as Johnathon Woolmore would have said "Nam..phlam..phlam..phow..frrrrr.bam..."
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